


Dark Masks and Darker Pasts

by tyrionlannistre



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-10 02:34:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5565988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tyrionlannistre/pseuds/tyrionlannistre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zoom kidnaps Iris. Problems and revelations ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Posting it from tumblr onto AO3 for boniferhasty, who won't stop shading me for it.

The point of her involvement isn’t that Barry’s girlfriend is part of their team now - it’s _not_. Iris wants to prove her place, even if there isn’t anything left to prove after the countless times she’s solved their cases. 

Maybe, just _maybe_ her motivation is in part fueled by how quickly everyone takes to Patty upon the revelation of Barry’s secret. It isn’t something she tries to dwell on, except for the few times she catches Patty in the lab working easily beside Cisco and Dr. Stein. 

Iris doesn’t know what Patty’s role in all of this is. She’s a smart girl, insistently sweet and funny in a way that reminds her too much of Barry. Still, it seems like she has no more a place in their labs than Eddie ever did. 

“Did you find anything?” Caitlin says over her shoulder. 

Iris shakes her head. “Not yet. Zoom is completely off everyone’s radar.” 

“Cisco and I have been working on this algorithm that can maybe explain how Zoom is so fast,” Caitlin tells her. “But there are a few holes missing. I wonder if Jay can give us more information...” 

“By ‘give us more information,’ do you mean to poke and prod him some more?” Iris snickers. Caitlin flushes a bright red and bites the inside of her mouth with a hum that’s more revealing that anything she could verbally confess. 

Minutes pass of continuously browsing the web and social media for any mentions of an unknown blur, but it’s only The Flash everyone is talking about. Speaking of - 

Iris turns in her chair. “Where is Barry?”

He’s there, then, with an extravagant gust of wind in his trail that lifts her hair. There’s a deep frown on his face, one that Patty is quick to kiss off. If Caitlin notices the way Iris’s eyes fall to her lap, Iris is happy she stays quiet. 

“Who knew tracking a walking shark would be this hard,” Barry mumbles. “Alright, let’s figure out what we got on Zoom.” 

Nothing of substance, Iris is sure. So under the guise of doing more research, Iris takes her work to the next room where a big computer and less distracting company waits for her. 

*

The feeling of being watched is an eerie one. Iris can’t pinpoint from where the gaze is coming from, but it raises the hairs on her neck. She should have known better than to decline Linda’s offer for a ride home, especially this late at night in Central City. 

It isn’t that she can’t defend herself. She grew up as a cop’s daughter, learned how to swing and punch properly to demobilize an attacker. Now, though... now, it isn’t thieves and creeps harassing the city. There are meta-humans and intelligent gorillas and humanized sharks plaguing the streets. 

Iris keeps her steps long and quick, which is quite difficult in the heels she’s wearing. A movement from the far corner of her vision makes her move quicker until she can see a parked cab a quarter-mile up. 

The movement in the shadows follows her, making the distance between her and the cab seem infinite. She almost cries with relief when she reaches the car and the driver signals her in.

“Where ya headed?” he asks, and she’s almost too eager with an answer. 

The goosebumps on her body haven’t subsided yet, and they don’t for the rest of the ride. Because she feels the shadow near her, even once she’s gotten home to the comfort of her father, who thankfully offers the other half of his bed to her. 

“It’s a stressful time, sweetheart. Our minds will conjure up the scariest situations,” Joe says after she’s told him. He kneels to kiss her forehead, a much needed, comforting gesture that still doesn’t shake her anxiety off. “Besides, if there was something out there, he’d have to walk over my dead body first.” 

A promise she hopes to never test.

*

Most of the office lights are off around this hour. It’s too late for employees to be working, and Iris would otherwise be home. Barry asked her to search the archives for some articles he needs, though, and this hour might be the only chance she gets to illegally search through the classified archives. 

She isn’t sure how much time passes until her phone buzzes with a call from her dad. Just as she thinks to answer it, she catches a familiar frame in the unlit corner of the room, dressed in the unmistakable cut of Cisco’s custom suit. Then he steps closer and she doesn’t see the red cowl she expects; only black with its grey emblem. 

“Iris...” 

His voice isn’t the same. It lacks the affection of a man who came out the better end of a rough life, who finds that there are things always to be happy about. The voice that speaks to her is deep and unwelcoming, hardened with a growling edge that makes her wonder if he’s a man at all. 

But in her name, there’s a familiarity to his tone, like it’s prayer on his lips that he wants to say again and again. A tone she knows so well because she hears it every day. 

Zoom stands only a few feet from her, menacing in his tall, lean stature, as though stuck in disbelief at the sight of her. Yet, if she squints, under the glare of her dim desk light, she sees the rare specks of green in the darker color of his eyes. _  
_

Iris feels her heart drop to the soles of her feet. _No - it can’t be.  
_

“Barry?” It’s a soft, barely-there whisper, and still he hears her. His eyes become a little greener, warmer, and his shoulders start to ease his tension. The growing silence makes the loud pounding in her chest seem louder. Her hands begins to shake with uncontrollable tremors, and she thinks she can see him shiver with a different kind of nerve, too. Iris swallows the thick knot in her throat and asks, “Are you Barry Allen on Earth 2?”

In an instant, his coldness returns and the anger is back in his eyes. “Barry Allen is dead,” he says, suddenly in her face with a hand clamped over her mouth to muffle her startled yelp. 

From up close, he’s even more frightening. She isn’t talking to a villain who has questionable intentions this time. She sees only pools of darkness in his stare; a man that has little humanity left in him and abides to no boundaries. 

And in all of it, it’s what he says next that sends ice curling through her veins until she’s either shaking from fear or shock. “Barry Allen died the day he buried Iris West.” 


	2. Chapter 2

Death has never scared her, not like it probably should. Iris has long accepted that it’s part of a natural process - birth, life, death - and there isn’t anything to be done when the time comes for the finale of the cycle. 

Yet, her mind can’t grapple Zoom’s confession about her place on Earth 2. How many times has she been threatened and risked her life in the last year alone? It never crosses her mind to think about what might happen if the circumstances do not permit her survival; what if she made one wrong move against the Clock King, or if Barry had shown up a second too late when she jumped off a building? 

Iris doesn’t know if it makes it better or worse to ask about it. Even if she could gather enough courage to, she hasn’t seen Zoom since he abducted her last night. 

He brought her to an old apartment building, one that is planned to be remodeled, and sealed her in. She isn’t constrained or tied to any chair, and the only injury sustained is the faint bruises around her wrist from Zoom’s earlier grip - marks that made him wince when he caught sight of them. Then he left her. 

“There has to be a way out of here,” Iris sighs, trying for the umpteenth time to break the blinds protecting the windows, but they don’t budge. 

She goes for the door, hoping that perhaps she’ll wear the wood down with her endless pounding, except that it sores her knuckles. With a frustrated grunt, she turns to the room again. Her back is barely to the door when the gust of wind announces his arrival, and she feels him hovering over her shoulder. 

“You’ve hurt yourself,” Zoom says, the deep growl in his voice sending a shiver down her spine. She tucks her fists into the sleeves of her jacket to cover them from him, out of fear of perhaps angering him.  

The uncertainty of the situation reminds her so much of her first encounter with the Flash, on the rooftop of Jitters, though the nerves don’t stem from excitement this time. Where the Flash had intrigued her and made her feel bold, Zoom fills her with dread and anxiety. 

_The same person_ , she thinks, _but they’re so incredibly different_. 

“Better me than you.” Despite the tremble in her voice, there is a surprising amount of conviction in her words.

It grows quiet, and Iris wants to believe he’s gone. She almost does until his breath is hot on her neck, his chest a nail’s length from her back, and he says softly, “I’d never hurt you, Iris.” 

A promise she easily trusts, Iris realizes. _Barry. He’s still Barry._ She spins quickly on her heel to face him, to plead with him to let her go, but Zoom isn’t there. It’s just her and the empty room.  

*

Iris dozes in and out of sleep, something she hadn’t allowed before Zoom’s reassurance. He’s dangerous, a meta-human with unimaginable capabilities, and maybe once Barry and her father find her, she’ll criticize her stupidity to trust him a little, but for now, Zoom’s promise is enough to keep her calm. 

On the fourth time her lids flutter open, she sees Zoom’s shadow in the corner, watching her. It’s unsettling and dissipates her tiredness. She knows it’s Barry under that mask, but his eyes are cold and distant in a way that she isn’t used to. 

“Why won’t you let me go?” she asks. He gives no answer and stares back with that unsettling looking. “The Flash will find me.” 

“Good. We have unfinished business.” 

Iris doesn’t miss the nasty edge in his voice. It perks her curiosity. “I have so many questions.”

She takes his silence as encouragement. “Why did you take me?” 

Again, silence. 

“Why are you here?” 

Zoom is unmoving, his quietness and watchful eyes worsening worsening in eerie. 

“What happened on Earth 2 to make you this way?” 

In the harsh light of the room, there’s a hardened gleam in his eyes, but Zoom still says nothing. 

“You’re a terrible interview,” Iris mutters annoyed. The briefest tilt passes his lips before it drops completely from his face. Iris decides to ask a final question. “What business do you have with the Flash?” 

This time, he does answer. “He will pay for what he’s done.” 

Iris tilts her head at him, hoping that he might go on, but he doesn’t. “What has he done?” 

She waits for a response while fingering the ring around her neck. Iris doesn’t have to look up to feel his eyes pinned to it. When she gets no answer, she knows Zoom is gone. 


	3. Chapter 3

Five calls and seven texts - all ignored. 

He feels so stupid for having thought nothing was wrong. Barry isn’t used to Iris not communicating with him, especially when he needs her the most. She’s usually quick in response because of all the valuable information she has for him, and timely, too. Timely, dependable, supportive. 

He assumed Iris was busy digging through the archives and couldn’t get to her phone last night. When Joe wakes him the next morning, awkwardly from the door once he realizes Patty is in bed with Barry too, Barry feels the beginnings of a dreadful situation. 

“Iris never came home.” 

The hours between Joe’s morning interruption and the late afternoon have passed entirely too slow. After having checked the office first, with the only traces of Iris being at her desk at all were the messy piles of folders and a dead phone, Barry has zipped and zapped through every corner of Central City countless times. 

He hasn’t allowed himself to worry, not yet. There were no break-ins at CCPN the night before, and though Linda says she hasn’t heard from Iris, she assures Barry that there is no sign of anything unusual in the building.

Iris seemingly disappearing without contact _is_ unusual, Barry wants to argue, but thinks it might be a matter better discussed at STAR Labs than with Iris’s coworkers.

“Do you think that maybe she found something and went investigating it by herself?” Caitlin suggests once he has returned from his fourth tour of the city.

It would be the most Iris West thing of her to do, to brave through a situation on her own and help him as much as she can. So Barry wouldn’t be surprised if Iris decided to take off and solve a case, except that, “Her phone, her bag, her work - everything was still on her desk. It looked like she was in the middle of going through those files.” 

“But if there were no break-ins and no evidence of anyone else being in the building - ” Patty starts, trying to fill the gaps of an explanation Barry isn’t sure is there. Then Cisco’s head perks from behind the computer, and like clockwork, Barry sees an idea forming in his mind. 

“Just because there was no break-in doesn’t mean that no one else was there,” Cisco says. His fingers type quickly at the keyboard, and Barry is quick by his side. “In a neat little trick Felicity taught me, I can pull up the video surveillance from every camera from CCPN to the pizza shop at the end of the block.”

In minutes, Cisco has three screens projected, each one showing a different floor of the CCPN building. The footage isn’t great, low lighting and all, but it’s enough for Barry to make out the familiar faces of people he’s seen around. 

“Alright. This is good,” Barry says. His eyes are scanning for something, anything that points to where Iris might be. “I need you to skim through the video. Iris said the last person would leave at eleven.” 

The minutes stretch until Iris comes onto one of the screens, looking cautiously around the empty hall before entering one of the rooms. She comes out soon enough with files under her arm, and Cisco pulls up the view of her office next. Barry’s heart is pounding loud, maybe even faster than usual. He finds himself repeating a prayer as he watches her, _Please let her be okay. Please let her be okay.  
_

As the video continues to roll, Barry starts to relax the tight grip he has on Cisco’s chair. There’s nothing, absolutely nothing amiss. Iris is going through the files, making notes every now and then, and her phone is off to the side. 

Patty sighs. “Maybe she did find a lead, something that just couldn’t wait so she took matters into her own - ”

“What was that?” Caitlin asks. “Cisco, rewind it by a few seconds.” The footage replays, and Caitlin pauses it at a point where Iris finally looks up from her work. 

Her attention is to the corner, towards the camera, the phone she just picked up forgotten. “She sees something...” Barry feels the sudden spike of panic, the worry he tried to keep at bay coming on so suddenly and so strongly. The video plays back, and every second passing sends a deeper chill through his body. 

The unmistakable look of terror in her face isn’t from seeing something, but rather some _one_. In an instant, the shadow reaches Iris - Zoom, it’s fucking _Zoom_ \- and Barry hears himself shouting, “No!” like he might keep Zoom from taking her. 

He can’t, though. Iris is gone from the room, and Barry feels his legs give out from under him. 

*

“I should have listened to her,” Joe murmurs with his head in his hands. “She said she was being followed. I should have listened.” 

_Yeah, you should have listened_ , Barry wants to scream at him. But would Barry respond any differently? He became caught up in his own crises, from Jay and Zoom to the return of Harrison Wells and how fast everything has picked up with Patty, would he really have protected her any better from her concerns? 

It makes him feel all the worse. 

“I don’t get it. Why would he take Iris?” Patty says. 

Because that’s where it hurts most. He can’t possibly explain that to his girlfriend, that he can better deal with the guilt of losing someone else, _anyone_ else, except Iris. 

He knows that it’s Iris he wouldn’t be able to live without; more than the guilt, it would be the anger, the depression, the unbearable pain that would turn him into the worst version of himself. 

So he stays quiet and lets Jay draw a plan. 

“He’s clearly using Iris to get both of us to him. We can split up between underground and the city,” Jay says. His hand is firm on Barry’s shoulder, offering what little comfort he can offer. “He wants us to find him, Barry. We’ll get to Iris.” 

Barry thinks to shove Jay’s hand away. “It isn’t only about getting to Iris. It’s about - ”

Making sure they get her alive, safe, unharmed. Barry chokes on his thoughts, and he blinks away the sting in his eyes. The idea of anything at all happening to her is unwelcoming. 

“We’re not splitting up. When we find Zoom, I want him to have to take on two metahumans.” 

Barry insists that the rest of their team - Joe included - stay at STAR Labs, away from the danger. Zoom isn’t capable of being brought down by bullets and gadgets, and having anyone else to look after will get in the way of saving Iris. 

When Patty kisses him goodbye, it’s Iris he thinks about. There would be no greater pleasure than holding her right now, to welcome the solid weight of her in his arms and know she’s okay. 

_I’m coming, Iris._

*

After trailing one another for an hour to any potential hideouts, it’s an old housing building that brings Jay to a halt. 

“I recognize this place,” he says. Barry can’t imagine that there’s much to it. It looks beat and torn, closed off from public visitation with signs around it promising newer homes. But Jay inspects it more until his face becomes grim in thought. 

“What is it?”

“On Earth 2, there was an accident here, when the new apartments were open for lease.”

Barry considers it an invitation to investigate, especially after Jay appears to be lost in the memory of it for several seconds longer. Whatever the accident was, it leaves Jay’s jaw clenched and his face dour. 

The place appears empty once they do a quick run on the first nine floors. On the tenth floor, however, they find a closed room at the end of the hall. Different from the other empty rooms that are open to their eyes. 

Room 115. Locked with a knob that doesn’t budge. 

Jay stands back for Barry to run the door open, and when Barry gets to the other side, he almost collapses with relief.

“ _Barry_.” His name sounds so incredibly sweet on Iris’s tongue, and even sweet still is her clutching embrace around him. He wants to hold her for a minute, or two and three and four, for as long as he can before he takes her back home. 

“Iris,” Barry pulls her tighter. His lips find the crown of her head, then her forehead, and he breaks apart long enough to check over her and ensure himself that she’s not hurt. “Iris, you okay? Everything is alright?”

She’s shaking her head, though she shakes all over, and Barry can hardly blame her for it. “You have to know - ”

“You can tell me everything later. I have to get you out of here.” 

“No, you don’t understand! Barry - ”

There’s a heavy thud from the door that startles Iris into a yelp. Barry looks over his shoulder to where Jay’s body lays carelessly, and over him stands Zoom. The stretch of a sinister smile in his dark cowl sends the coldest of chills down Barry’s spine. 

“We meet again,” Zoom greets, his hand reaching down to pull Jay up by the neck so that Zoom can look him squarely in his unconscious face. His eyes, then, turn to Barry’s in slow iniquity, pools of black as haunting as his voice when he says, “I will show you how heroes become villains, Barry Allen.”


End file.
